There's no way in hell the current set of players are worse than the team who won this Europe League.
Is Ole’s football really any better than José & LVG’s?
- Thread starter Schmeichel's Cartwheel
- Start date
Even if they are shouldn't the blame go to the guy who has spent hundreds of millions trying to improve the squad?
Thats not true
Ole literally had the same set of players, sold some (of his own free will), bought some, if the team is worse now than when he took over you're unintentionally throwing his squad building under the bus. To inherit a team and make it worse after spending 300m requires great incompetence
Why is stability a bad thing? What are you actually talking about?
The alternative would be to go long then. You'd prefer that or think it would work?
And to be fair passing it around the back isn't a problem, Maguire, Lindelof and Shaw are three players whose touch and passing is generally good. It's in front of them where the problem is.
Well that sounds familiar
Common sense is beyond most of the Ole excusers.
Why he insists on playing a double-pivot against teams Milan is beyond me!
Miles better. Judging after a game with having to play 2 dms and half the attackers injured is nothing but knee jerk.
We were poor to concede last night but the over reaction is ridiculous for a 1-1 result at home to AC Milan. Had Maguire missed that sitter we could have easily won 2-0. We were missing half our attackers. Because we got West Ham at the weekend, which is a must win, he took off our attackers. There were no options in the bench to make like for like without bringing on shoretire. Do you really think a front 3 of Greenwood, Diallo and Shoretire would do much against Milan?
People need to get a grip sometimes. We won’t dominate every game. We literally just beat City 2-0 away from home. Is that a badly coached team? Not many teams can do that, especially 3 years in a row. Yes I want us to be better in possession but that’s down to the players at times. It doesn’t always come back to the manager and coaches.
People need to get a grip sometimes. We won’t dominate every game. We literally just beat City 2-0 away from home. Is that a badly coached team? Not many teams can do that, especially 3 years in a row. Yes I want us to be better in possession but that’s down to the players at times. It doesn’t always come back to the manager and coaches.
A win against City does come back to manager, a draw against injury plagued Milan at home, does not? We win against PSG - all hail Ole, we lose and are downgraded to Europa league - it is the players, not Ole. It does not work like that. He is ultimately responsible for performance of the first team throughout a season in all competitions under all circumstances.
Last edited by a moderator:
Yes, if we’re not careful, we will sleepwalk into becoming Wenger’s Arsenal of about the last 5-8 years of his reign. Top 4 is a trophy and if you can pick up the odd FA Cup along the way, then that’s a nice bonus. I’d never want United to morph into that.
Rashford played against City. Arguably our most important forward if you consider Bruno and AM.
We didnt have him yesterday. We rested Fred and Shaw for most of the game to play our cover squad. Our season CB partnership was also changed to accommodate Bailly. Martial got injured half way.
It may be a disappointment- but we didnt lose to AC milan. We drew with the 2nd best team in serie A who also had injury problems.
We were also injury plagued but let's just put all the negatives on the manager...
Read the post.
The manager is ultimately responsible for first team results, simples. Honestly, done with this circular logic.
I did, it doesn't really make sense.
If you don't like him, that's fine. If you don't like his tactics, that's fine. But this "rock the boat" line I've seen several times is just a bunch of conspiratorial rubbish. If you've ever had a job then I'm sure you'd know that "rocking the boat" as you say pisses off your colleagues, alienates those working under you, and ultimately gets you the boot. See Mourinho. Stirring up trouble in public and creating controversial headlines isn't a good thing and I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think otherwise.
AC Meeelan won 1-1 last night?
It's simplistic logic to ignore context. When you write that Milan was plagued by injuries but forget to mention that it was also the case for United is starts to smell of agenda. It was 1-1 with a couple of huge chances missed so it wasn't a bad result anyway. If a 1-1 result against the team second in Seria A is cause for complaining, then it just shows how far we've actually come over the last couple of years.
I find it bizarre you think the above. Even outside of football - I see this every year with my job and literally all of my friends (who work across completely different industries). Salary, bonus, holidays, contracts, promotions etc. It’s a balancing act but it’s the norm in high pressure results based jobs, which Ole’s definitely is.
I don’t dislike Ole at all, I just think it’s been evident from about 1 year in that this system is his plan and I personally just think he’s way too risk adverse to be a United manager.
You’re right. I fecked up the maths. City have played one more game than us. They scored 5 goals in that game, to give them a total of 61. Which is 6 more than our total of 55. I was out by 1 goal. Completely undermines my point
Now that does undermine my point! A bit.
To me the big difference between life under Ole and under Mou is that we’re so streaky now. We have runs where we look great, play nice football, score lots of goals then runs where we look absolutely woeful. With Mourinho it was more consistently dour and bad to watch.
We’ve been fairly shit since, basically, the beginning of 2021. But we were good (and good to watch) in December. Plus that good spell featured lots of stirring comebacks. Which made it even more fun. Which just didn’t happen under Jose.
Obviously, that sort of streakiness (we even blow hot and cold within the 90 minutes of most of our games) is a huge problem. And it’s been a pattern of life under Ole since his first season. A month or two of looking like contenders, followed by months of utter cluelessness. Which is why I’ve been saying we need a new manager for ages now.
I still maintain his time in charge has been a hell of a lot more entertaining than the soul-sucking misery of the previous two managers. It helps that our manager isn’t an insufferable arsehole, obviously.
Last edited:
Of course he is - but lets not pretend like 1-1 at home to Milan is a disaster. We played a poor first half, controlled the second half and gave away a sloppy goal. Our problem is that Greenwood is a shadow of the player he was last season, Martial the same (and got injured), Pogba, Rashford and Cavani was missing.
So we finished the game missing 4 of our 5 most creative players - and the last one is out of form. But let's judge after West Ham and Milan away
But LVG and Mourinho payed too much for 2nd class players. What real quality did Mourinho and/or LVG bring in? For the prices paid, I doubt Pogba or Martial delivered. At least Ole got Bruno; who does deliver.
You can't blame any manager when we pour over a million quid a week down the drain on underperfoming dross like Martial, De Gea, Mata, Matic and Pogba.
The only constant in this period of dissapointment is the players.
The only constant in this period of dissapointment is the players.
As a few people have pointed out, he's trying to play/manage 'like SAF'.
Whether he* truly understands that he doesn't have the players to do that or whether he knows he doesn't but believes he must persist for those few players that are up to snuff to get used to it as he adds one piece at a time is up for debate.
*and the caf.
Whether he* truly understands that he doesn't have the players to do that or whether he knows he doesn't but believes he must persist for those few players that are up to snuff to get used to it as he adds one piece at a time is up for debate.
*and the caf.
Have I said they won? I fecking did. Apologies. Well, the point I was making is that you can't praise a manager when his team win, and put the blame on players in case of a loss
Yeah there may be a hint of truth to that. Is that a bad thing? Probably not in the long run.
I mean SAF management is all he knows. One thing we can’t debate is that Ole will have a fixed opinion on how the club should be run. No doubt he keeps in contact with the big man as well from time to time, again I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I’d much rather a manager have a vision and make the players fit that vision as opposed to a manager that flits from one style to another to get the best out of players who shouldn’t be here for the long term. Hopefully the DOF role will help sustain that ethos, that’s what they are there for really.
The same underperforming dross that defeated City? If the manager can not coach his players, then he is not suitable for that particular job. Our squad is very good. Some of the dross have achieved much more in their careers than a world record CB Maguire, who was bought by Ole.
And again that argument... Our goal difference and goal tally was massively influenced by that Soton game. There's no way you can draw any conclusion from that stat to the way we performed throughout the season. What it does show however is what most of us suspect anyway: We are able to pull off good and entertaining games... Once every three of four games. Which isn't good enough and not much better than what we did under Mou and LvG. I'd argue that under Mou in his first season we played better consistently. Under LVG not so much. We were boring to watch but at least we didn't sit back against any half decent team.
Post #384
But we're man United. We're supposed to win every game 25 -0 with patterns of play being highlighted across the screen.
Poch would've won this game with the under 8s.
Nobody else draws in Europe, ever.
Exactly, It has to be selective memory for how dour the football was on the whole under Mou and LVG to even suggest Ole's brand comes close. We have off days, we have frustrating days where he gets the tactics wrong, we sometimes are too cautious against top 6 opponents but we've had way more attacking, fluid games under Ole. i think we're over reliant on a few players to deliver that football (Pogba, Bruno and Rashford) but he's clearly looking to build the team with more attacking players in specialist roles so I only see us getting better.
I've never seen Chiellini so nervous and passive in the air. Remember it very well.
Sorry didn't see that. I agree with most of that. Apart from your point about Mou. His first season with us I mostly enjoyed. The second was pure shit but that cnut did that on purpose as he wasn't backed as much as he wanted to.
I always blame/praise both win or lose.
The football is too slow, too many touches in transition phases. It should be 1/2 touch. Maguire, Matic, Fred etc it's 4/5 touches, at that point the options to pass have been closed off and you then see the safe sideways or backward option.
I know Ole prefers the counter approach and that is fine. When it's on, you also see many killer through balls tried on the counter that are poorly executed and just give possession away too easily.
It's either slow going nowhere possession ball or break neck speed counters that go no where because the quality and choice of pass is wank.
3 left backs on the pitch last night at the end of the game, it was head scratching stuff. I know there are injuries, but this made literally no sense, the was no need to bring on Shaw, I don't even know what position he was supposed to be playing.
And another near post header from a corner, if they haven't identified this and put a plan in place in training, then that's on Ole. If they have and the players don't setup correctly, its on them. Kjaer ran past 4 players to win that header.
It's so pathetic that posters will be happy with a few seasons of top 4 just because we haven't had that since SAF retired. Apparently, we are the only club in the world where progress happens in baby steps despite spending more than any club and having one of the highest wage bills in the world.
I think it is a bad thing because he’s nothing like as good as Fergie, an inferior manager trying to replicate him makes no sense to me.
Ex players and assistants of Ferguson have all supposedly ‘known what it takes’ or ‘learnt from the best’ but who has actually been successful at doing it?.
We’re seeing Ole’s vision and it’s nothing special, it’s an extension of Mourinho’s but without all the unnecessary drama.
What has that got to do with Ole or his football?